Before reforming Ripe, a transcendent influence on a wave of bands currently mining the shoegazer sound, frontman Mark Murphy was plying his trade alongside fellow member Katie Dixon as a member of Moondriven, who took their name from the seminal act that they spawned. It was all going along fine, but slowly, and without receiving their due recognition. It came down to a choice: did they want to sit around and achieve nothing special, or did they want to go back to their roots and deliver something truly, hopefully, magnificent?

The answer was simple. “We booked a session at Birdland Studios to see how it would go,” Mark explains, and immediately the band attracted label interest, eventually putting pen to paper with Timberyard Records. “It just started sounding like that,” he says of the decision to record and release it as Ripe, “and it just made perfect sense.”

Of course it makes perfect sense – from the morning after girls through to Riff Random and far and beyond, the influence of bands like Swervedriver, Ride, and yes, Ripe, can most certainly be heard ringing out loud and proud. “Re-emergence of shoegazer as a music form that seems to be taking off again. “I think it makes sense with the times in that it’s a very chaotic sounding music, and music’s seemed very straight and stripped back and sparse, and it’s that cycle again where people want to hear a lot of information in a song all at once,” he says.

“On the indie level there’s the post-punk dance thing which is very staccato, there’s the Jet phenomenon, and it’s just filling a hole that hasn’t existed for a while. It draws off a lot of music too – it draws off the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, Sonic Youth, and my bloody valentine. There’s lots of different aspects within it as well.”

It’s something that Mark feels is missing in much modern music at the moment; with bands like Coldplay turning indie into the mainstream, and whilst it’s all very well done, what’s exiting about Galaxies and Stars is that it has a a bit of a dangerous sound about it. “Like bands like Sonic Youth used to have,” Mark confirms. “We think that’s needed again at the moment.”

When originally going in to record the Galaxies and Stars EP, there was no plan in place for it to be a Ripe release – it was as a nothing band, simply a chance for the group to put down ideas. “We were thinking of almost starting another band, and it just felt like Ripe so it made sense to call it that.”

Currently the classic Ripe releases are out of print, retailing for large sums at exclusive second-hand dealers, particularly the much-lauded The Plastic Hassle. “It’s become quite rare,” Mark observes. “We probably are interested in re-releasing it and remastering it, because a lot of people really like it and hold it in high status. It became quite hard to follow that up with the Moondriven stuff, but enough time has elapsed for the new stuff to be looked at without prejudice. We’re doing half that album in the live set and the whole new EP. It’s good because we get people interested.”

Now plans are afoot for Ripe to return to the studio in two months to record their long, long overdue third album, and then release it by September or October. Somewhat surprisingly given the strength of the five songs on the Galaxies and Stars, it’ll be very separate release. According to Mark, only “How’s My Living?” will appear on the album, albeit in an altered version. “The version you hear is a different one compared to the album, so we’ll be starting from scratch to do the album.”

Some might consider it quite a brazen step to take, especially considering how strong the EP is. “The strength of The Plastic Hassle was that it had a real theme,” he explains, “so whatever theme develops we’ll probably go with that. We put a lot of work into it,” he says of the EP, “and went for a different angle compared to what Ripe were know for, but had to connect it theme-wise as well. It was sort of tricky, but in the end it came out well.”

Once again the band are determined to explore their textures and angles on the forthcoming longplayer. “We’ve always been known for pretty long songs, so we can get away with that sort of thing. “Waiting to Explode” is probably closest to the old Ripe sound, because it has some of that eeriness that The Plastic Hassle is probably famous for.”

The band plan to team once more with Lindsay Gravina at Birdland Studios in deepest darkest Melbourne, having recorded the EP there. It’s as much about familiarity as anything else, as Mark explains. “We know how to get the sound now and what guitars and amps to use, so it will be a lot easier in setting up for the album. The good thing about doing this music is that you can do a lot of it live, straight to tape, because it relies on energy a lot so it won’t be a long process hopefully.”

With Ripe now completed with the appendage of Dan Lendvay from Riff Random and Michael Stranges, ex-the morning after girls, the upcoming reformation show in Melbourne will feature original Ripe co-founder and guitarist Peter Moran on one very special song. It’s clear that the other band members are more than happy for Mark to be carrying on the Ripe legacy. “It’s been so long that there’s no ill-feeling about it, and Peter’s wrapped just to be playing on one song.”

Ripe’s Galaxies and Stars EP is out now. The band are also touring behind the new EP. Dates:
Thursday 13 April - Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
Friday 21 April - The Spectrum, Sydney
Friday 5 May - Rocket Bar, Adelaide